I put this post in the Newbies area for a reason

I believe that bitcoin will someday be orders of magnitude more secure (and more valuable). If you buy bitcoins now, you are an early adopter getting in while prices are cheap and betting that security and utility will improve.

In the meantime, yes, you must be absurdly paranoid. These websites cannot be trusted any more than you absolutely have to. To actually hold onto your coins long enough for your investment to pay off, you need to push the paranoia up to the tinfoil-hat level. This is the price of being an early bitcoin adopter.